BAD REPUTATIONS: “MATTER OF INTELLIGENCE” AND THE “GOSSIP WORK” SEMINAR

E-FLUX
JULY 1, 2026

“In 2004, the [Vera List] Center’s inaugurated their ‘Focus’ themes, each of which structures the nonprofit’s research and public programming for the span of two years. Past VLC Focus themes read like indices of the biennia they’re tethered to—from the blithe Obama aughts (2005–06’s ‘Considering Forgiveness’) to the fascist turn (2015–17’s ‘Post Democracy’). Eriola Pira, VLC’s curator and programs director since 2019, organized the current Focus, titled ‘Matter of Intelligence’ (MoI)—perhaps its most sweeping and abstract to date. I will admit my initial skepticism towards this theme. Isn’t ‘intelligence’ a bit too broad, both for an academic lecture series and for the era of OpenAI within which it sits? Underscoring the vast ambit of the program’s scope, an accompanying digital archive presents an ever-expanding collection of textual and visual materials that Pira and assistants have indexed on the online archiving software Are.na, which provides a platform for free and paying users to organize images, text, links, and files.”

—Cat Kron